How many conferences should I apply to?

It sounds like I am being stuck up, and I certainly don’t mean it that way. But I don’t want to apply to more conferences than I can reasonably attend.

I can write the papers easily. I have found that the more papers I write, the more I have to write. My brain just keeps flowing ideas, related tangentially to one another or to my own personal preferences.

That doesn’t mean I will get accepted at all of them, of course. I was disappointed in the lack of reception to the research agenda presented in my paper for 4Cs.

But how many conferences can I reasonably attend while teaching? Is there a limit to how I should decide to apply? (Obviously national is better than regional in prestige. But what if you can do both? Is that better or worse?)

Looking over tenure recommendations for big schools indicates that two to three national presentations a year are acceptable. I would assume that means that regional presentations must come in higher numbers. (Are there very many conferences in the summer?) Of course, I am not presently presenting sufficiently to apply for positions at large research universities.

Is that a goal? Doing sufficient research that someone in the large university would look at me?

I don’t know. I like presenting. I like writing. But I don’t know that I want to work at a research-driven university.

But if I haven’t been presenting for the past fifteen years and I need to be presenting a lot to show that I can, then perhaps I should continue to work up presentations.

How many research topics can I pursue at one time?

Really my question is: do my topics need to be in one field, so that I become the expert or can I distribute them across multiple interests?

Is it important to build up a reputation in a field? Or is it sufficient to build up a name across the field?

Right now my papers are on:
information literacy for low SES [accepted]
teaching controversial issues, religion and politics [accepted]
an analysis of bias in FoxNews.com political coverage [accepted]
job searches [pending]
the use of fairy tales to introduce literary analysis [pending]
the benefits of pen and computer [pending]
bridging the gap for low SES in digital rhetoric and culture [pending] (Not an example of double dipping, though it does have some facets similar to the accepted paper.)
the rhetorical creation of heroes at the national political conventions [writing]
the rhetorical creation of Americans at the national political conventions [writing] (A subset of the work above.)
Christianity as it is portrayed in the works of six popular speculative fiction authors [writing]
an analysis and comparison of bias in FoxNews.com and CNN.com political coverage [writing] (Again the work above is a subset of this.)

If you look at these topics, you would think I am interested in:
politics (and rhetoric)
class discrimination
computers

You’d be correct. But I am also interested in cross-genre romance, science fiction and fantasy, mysteries, genre-questionable literary works, teaching in general…

So, again, the question is, should I limit my topics? Or can I pursue a broad range of interests across multiple intersecting fields?

Does it matter how much my name (or my school name) gets out there?

Which school do I identify?

The low ses work was primarily done at CC2 where I do not teach at present. So I put CC1, where I have continued the work, down as my school affiliation.

On my other presentations, should I put down SLAC? It is where I hope to work full-time and do work part-time. Will it prejudice the readers against me if I am at CC1 or SLAC? Can I submit without my college affiliation listed?

I guess CC1 doesn’t care if I do research and SLAC does. So if it is not related to work done at CC1 (or 2), I should put down SLAC.